Environment Europe is delighted to announce the Oxford Spring School in Ecological Economics 2020 to take place at the 800-year-old Balliol College, Oxford on 22 - 28 March 2020 devoted to Ecological Economics, Governance and Environmental Sustainability: Ecosystems, Economy, Policy. The programme includes interventions from the Sustainable Europe Research Institute, The Open University, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Institute of Sustainable Development Strategies and Environment Europe Foundation.
Context
The School will address key elements of the new economy transformation, exploring the cutting edge methods and policy applications in ecological economics. With a clear sustainable development focus, it will draw on the expertise of a range of disciplines: economics, ecology, physics, environmental sciences, sociology, psychology, complex systems theory, etc. to address the current challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, water shortages, social cohesion and achieving sustainability. The course will be composed of a theoretical and applied modules and will address three key elements of the new economy transformation: an industrial ecology approach, multiple criteria methods for decision making and new tools for measuring progress.
The applied module will be taught by active professionals and experts, who advise international organisations, national and city governments around the world and have experience working with EU institutions. The School will draw on the EU experience of environmental policy and will focus in its applied part on green fiscal reform, climate change, renewable energy, multidimensional poverty measurement, sustainable cities and values. The scope of sustainability issues addressed during the School, covering not only economic and environmental, but also social sustainability, will make this School truly unique.
Objectives
The Oxford Spring School will focus on the role, assessment methods and evaluation of ecosystems from the macroeconomic, regional and business point of view. A comprehensive critique of existing evaluation approaches will be given with a detailed consideration of pros and cons of using money as a measuring rod for the value of ecosystems. The school is aiming to offer more inclusive and scientifically sound alternatives to monetary evaluation, based on the fundamental principle of incommensurability of values shared by many ecological economists. New approaches based on multi-criteria decision aid will be considered.
Background
The Oxford, Spring, Summer and Winter Schools in Ecological Economics organised by Environment Europe attracted participants from 58 countries, including Canada, USA, Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Iceland, UK, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Latvia, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, China, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand, including UNDP, UNEP, IUCN, OECD, WWF, GGGI experts as well as representatives of ministries, companies, NGOs and leading universities.